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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25237144">Two's Company, Three's A Crowd</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokhal/pseuds/rokhal'>rokhal</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ghost Rider (Comics), Marvel (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abusive Relationships, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Disabled Character, Consensual Possession, Gen, Kid Fic, Possession, Psychopathology &amp; Sociopathy, Robbie Reyes Has PTSD, Sort Of, Tulpas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:41:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,270</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25237144</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokhal/pseuds/rokhal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Never, ever, ever seek mental health advice from Reddit.</p><p>(Robbie gets a new brain friend.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Robbie asks the Internet about the voice in his head.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This fic takes place in my Legend of Hillrock Heights 'verse, where Robbie drives Uber on the side and his deal with Eli is a kill code, but it's outside of that continuity, for reasons that will become clear.</p><p>If Uber!verse were to have a happy ending, this could very well be it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The end began when Robbie Reyes asked Reddit for mental health advice.</p>
<hr/><p>User boost426 posted to r/mentalhealth:</p><p>
  <span class="u">
    <b>Need help getting rid of voice in my head</b>
  </span>
</p><p>For about 1 year I have had a voice in my head. I can stop it from taking over my body unless I pass out or have a concussion, but he keeps trying to talk me into doing things I don't want to do and it's interfering with my job and with taking care of my family. I can't just see a therapist because I don't have time or money right now and there's no one else to take care of my brother if I got locked up or something. I saw an exorcist but he couldn't diagnose me and his solution to my problem was not acceptable.</p><p>I do meditation and breathing exercises when I can. It helps with my anger management but that's all.</p><p>The voice in my head claims to be the ghost of a relative I last saw when I was six. He doesn't sound like my thoughts. He keeps trying to take over my body but he usually can't. We hate each-other. I think he is a paranormal phenomenon but if anyone has any ideas for how to make him less loud I would really appreciate it because I am so tired and I don't have time for this.</p>
<hr/><p>The next day, Robbie had five different comments that were variations on “See a therapist,” “We don't have time for your bad creative writing exercises,” and “Dude, you need serious medication, seriously, see a therapist.” He hunched over the laptop screen and tugged his hair with both fists.</p><p>He needed to see a therapist. He'd get a diagnosis that would make him an unfit guardian. Gabe would go back to the group home. They'd put Robbie on some drug that they were 50% sure was going to help, but because everything that affected Robbie's body hit him harder than Eli, their drugs would either loosen Robbie's grip against possession, or worse, succeed and blend the two of them permanently together. He bounced his leg and scrolled down the page. Another comment:</p><p>“I'm not sure from your description but your experience sounds somewhat like DID, because you're distressed about this voice, but DID is characterized by uncontrolled and maladaptive switching between alters, which you say rarely happens and then only when your body and brain activity is depressed. I can't know, but have you heard of tulpas? In a tulpa system, the host generally retains control of the body, but tulpas are usually benign because the host created them on purpose. Maybe your situation is something in between? It sounds like you have a lot of stress in your life, so it makes sense that your tulpa might be kind of fucked up. If it is a tulpa, and maybe it isn't, because you'd probably remember creating one, tulpa creation is kind of an involved process, it's usually possible to dissipate one by meditation. Again, kind of an involved process.”</p><p><b>The fuck is a tulpa?</b> Eli asked.</p><p><em> I don't know, but apparently it's killable, </em> Robbie said, and Googled it.</p><p>A tulpa turned out to be an independent consciousness deliberately created in a person's own brain through months of focused meditation, usually out of a desire for companionship or curiosity about what it would be like to have another person sharing one's head. Robbie could tell you what that was like; it sucked. Eli agreed. Tulpamancers were fucking lunatics.</p><p>Tulpas tended to have different names, personalities, perspectives, and desires from their hosts, like Eli. Tulpas could have the identities of real or fictional people, like Eli. Tulpas couldn't usually control their host without their hosts' permission, again like Eli. And the first recorded incidence of a Westerner using the established Tibetan meditation practices to create a tulpa ended in the host, Alexandra David-Néel, deliberately and permanently destroying her creation.</p><p>Robbie couldn't remember creating Eli or looking up old news articles about serial killers to base him on, but his memory had giant holes in it anyway, and if Eli <em> was </em> a tulpa and could be destroyed with six months of hard-core meditation, Robbie wouldn't pass up that chance. He did some research, took notes, and after a week he figured he knew as much about the process of creating and destroying tulpas as he was ever going to find.</p><p><b> Estas bromeando, chico, </b> Eli insisted as Robbie sat crosslegged at the head of his bed at one in the morning, eyes shut, breathing deep, trying to forget the part of his mind that could “hear” Eli. <b> I am not a tulpa. I was—I lived! I did things! I know things you don't know—are you fucking kidding me, <em>I'm the source of your power,</em> this is ridiculous. You're ignoring me, and that's <em>very</em> impolite. You delusional fuckwad. Good-night. </b></p><p>Robbie stayed up another hour, listening to his heartbeat. <em> There is no one here but me. There is one consciousness, and it is me. There is no one here but me. </em></p><p>His alarm woke him at six thirty, as usual. <b> Good morning. Sleep well? </b> He bared his teeth, showered, dressed, made breakfast for himself and Gabe. <em> There is no one here but me. </em></p><p>At Canelo's, while Robbie lay on his back on the creeper doing a transmission fluid flush on a Ford Probe, the Charger turned itself on and revved its cold engine with a roar while shrieking with the custom horn Eli had installed in '96 that sounded like an Aztec death whistle. Robbie jackknifed upright and bashed his forehead on the Probe. Transmission fluid splashed on his face, barely missing his eye. <b> Could a tulpa do <em>that?</em> </b></p><p><em> Yes, </em> Robbie replied, scooting himself out to check the damage and wash his face off in the bathroom, keeping one eye tightly closed. <em> Because <b>I</b> could do that, and I made you out of my brain. For some stupid, godforsaken reason that I can't remember. </em></p><p>
  <b>Holy fuck you're an idiot.</b>
</p><p>Robbie shoved his thoughts into the car and turned the engine back off, felt it die with a clunk that shook the whole frame on its shocks.</p><p>
  <b> That? What you just did? That's not normal. You could not do that without me. That is my car, <em>that you stole.</em> You're being irrational. </b>
</p><p><em>There is no one here but me.</em> Robbie washed his face off, wiped his closed eyelids delicately with a damp paper towel, checked the damage. He had a bruising cut that bumped against one wing of the chrome V on his forehead, the lower rim of the Rider's front vent which stayed visible even when he was human. The raised metal had protected the skin lower down, so the cut wasn't as bad as it could have been. The injured skin itched where it merged with the chrome. His right eye looked and felt okay, he could see out of it, it didn't hurt, and it wasn't cloudy or red. Just the usual orange. <em>There is one consciousness, and it is me.</em> <em>Eli Morrow is a self-inflicted psychological phenomenon. I can destroy him just as I created him.</em></p><p>
  <b>Wow.</b>
</p><p>Robbie continued to meditate nightly. Eli started to get quieter, which he hoped was progress—hoped very much that it was progress, because spending so long meditating was costing him more sleep than he could afford to lose—and he started to get strange images in his mind: flickers of weapons, blood. The feeling of his hands wrapping around something warm and soft. A meat-metal smell, hot fluid on his face. Chains rattling, a tow-chain, a pair of handcuffs in his hands, hitching the tow-chain to a clasp under the bumper of the Charger. <em> I am making this up, </em> Robbie told himself. <em> These are not memories. They feel real because my mind wants them to feel real, because I have serious psychological problems and a lot of un-addressed childhood trauma, that I don't have time to deal with right now. </em></p><p>
  <b>Go fuck yourself.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>That was me, telling myself to go fuck myself. There is no one here but me.</em>
</p><p><b> Stop eavesdropping, </b> Eli—no, Robbie—snapped, to himself, and the images and feelings grew hazy and distant.</p><p>
  <em>There is one consciousness, and it is me. There is no one here but me. I will hear no thoughts but my own.</em>
</p><p>The sleep deprivation started to get so bad that Robbie almost ran the Charger into a concrete median on his way home from work one Saturday. <b> Great. Kill us both. </b> Eli was quieter while he meditated, but after two weeks, Robbie had made no progress shutting him up during the day. And Eli always used to disengage and wander off when Robbie meditated or prayed long enough, even before Robbie had started trying to will him away; he went off to haunt the car whenever he got too bored.</p><p>Robbie realized that he was still, after two weeks of resolving to treat Eli as a mental phenomenon that could be destroyed at will, thinking of Eli as an actual ghost. But Eli was not a ghost. Eli was a brain bug, a symptom of the same trauma that had erased major events of Robbie's early childhood and forced him to repeat first grade. Eli was a perfectly mundane, explicable, <em> fixable </em> problem.</p><p>He made it home without any more close calls with the car, parked in the apartment lot, and sat there in the driver's seat, slowly rubbing the back of his head against his headrest. He liked the way the buzzed hair felt on his leather upholstery. He shut his eyes, but kept watching through the mirrors for anyone who didn't look like they belonged there. His radiator made a sharp <em> tink </em> as it started to cool, a brief satisfying little pain like cracking a knuckle. <em> I am the only consciousness in this body. </em></p><p>
  <b>What about the car? You the only one in the car, too?</b>
</p><p>Robbie forced himself to open his eyes, turned around. The view behind the car was exactly what he'd seen in the mirrors. <em>I'm making that up.</em></p><p>
  <b>Jesus tapdancing Christ.</b>
</p><p>Sunday, he and Gabe went to the library, and Gabe played on the computer and checked out some new books about wolves while Robbie sat against the wall nearby, tried to meditate, fell asleep, and had a horrible dream about axe-murdering some mobster and his wife and two sons from a first-person perspective. When he woke up, he had a headache, he was starving, his eye kept twitching uncontrollably, and he stayed pressed against the wall with his arms crossed behind his back for almost five minutes, ignoring the concerned librarian hovering over him and asking if he needed help as he counted his breaths. <em> I'm Roberto Reyes. I did not kill those people. I am not going to kill this woman. I have control of my body. I do not kill people— </em> not true— <em> anymore, unless I'm really sure it's the right thing to do, which is very rare and definitely not right now. I am not going to kill this woman. </em></p><p>On Monday, he was still dead tired with a headache. He trudged in to the locker room at Canelo's, snapped on his coveralls, and had a sudden sick stab of doubt.</p><p>“¿Qué haces?” Marty asked as Robbie stalked across the garage, around the lifts and vehicles and over to the cluttered pegboard on the back wall. “Robbie?”</p><p>Robbie opened and shut drawer after drawer, pawing through scan tools and multimeters until he found the Gaussmeter. He flicked the on switch, but nothing happened. It wanted a nine-volt battery. He grabbed a working multimeter and swapped in the battery from that. Turned on the Gaussmeter and held the probe against his palm. Adjusted the dials and scales until the reading came into range. 172 milliGauss.</p><p>That was...measurable.</p><p>Robbie turned around. Canelo was in his office. Tommy was busy, Ramón...just no. But Marty was right there. Come to think of it, Marty was always considerate, even when he was calling Robbie in to work unexpectedly on a Saturday night. “Could you do me a favor? Tell me what you get from this?”</p><p>“Sure. Zero,” Marty said, reaching for the meter. “It's broken?”</p><p>“Maybe. Could you—” Robbie cleared his throat, handed the meter over slowly. It felt heavy.</p><p>Marty probed his own hand. “Zero. Claro.” He dug his cell phone out of his pocket, waved it back and forth under the probe so Robbie could see the numbers rise and fall from zero to the low teens and back again. “Works fine.”</p><p>Robbie was willing to bet that even if he went to every single person working in the shop and all the customers, none of their bodies' electromagnetic fields would be anywhere close to 172 milliGaus. “Thanks,” he croaked, and took the Gaussmeter back.</p><p>Marty didn't leave. “You okay?”</p><p>“Yeah.” The numbers on the Gaussmeter soared again as Robbie turned it over in his hand to switch the battery back.</p><p>Marty spotted it. “¡Mierda! You got a steel plate in your hand?”</p><p>“Something like that,” Robbie said miserably.</p><p>Eli was, of course, a supernatural phenomenon. Eli was a ghost. Robbie was possessed. Robbie hadn't made Eli up, but he had wasted an entire twenty-four hours of his life in pointless meditation that had done nothing but steal away precious sleep, and Robbie could not make Eli go away by wishing it.</p><p>“It bothering you?” Marty asked, as Robbie took deep breaths and stared down at the work table through blurred eyes.</p><p>“It's fine,” Robbie managed. He felt a sudden urge to punch and kick the work table. It was either that or cry, and crying wouldn't get him fired and if he breathed very carefully he could do it quietly. He stood there, not moving, until Marty went away.</p><p>The day rolled on. Robbie collected himself and got to work. At the end of the day, he made dinner, helped Gabe with his homework, and slept. In the back of his head, a film-reel rolled continually, gunshots and knife-slashes and struggling bodies under his hands. Eli was probably trying to brainwash him into wanting to kill people now. Well, that wasn't going to work. Robbie already wanted to do a lot of things he never would. What was one more thing. He could handle this. He had no choice.</p><p>Robbie stopped the arduous clear-your-mind meditation and went back to praying at night, the Rosary and then the battered and wrinkled novenna to Mary Undoer of Knots: <em>Most Holy Mary, you undo the knots that suffocate your children, extend your merciful hands to me. I entrust to you today this knot...you know what I'm talking about...and all the negative consequences it—he—provokes in my life.</em> But even with taking a break from brain-training, the headaches and muscle spasms persisted. He wondered if that was residual sleep deprivation or if he'd permanently damaged himself somehow. He did notice it was easier to sit quietly in traffic after all that practice: just lean back in his seat, concentrate on his breathing, and become a passive observer indifferent to the passage of time, while blood vessels squirmed under his scalp and the skin at the back of his neck prickled and he occasionally caught flashes of memories that weren't his own, drifting up. Robbie figured that as long as he stayed on top of his anger management, it wouldn't matter if Eli actually managed to brainwash him. It was fine. If, this time next year, he found himself fantasizing uncontrollably about cutting up and road-hauling other drivers and beating his co-workers over the head with shop tools, well, he simply wouldn't do it. Simple as not stealing Marty's lunch out of the fridge, not even when he was very very hungry, which was often. Eli didn't know the first thing about human decency.</p><p>A couple months went by, and Eli was quieter than usual. Perhaps offended that Robbie had dared doubt his personhood, perhaps suffering his own existential crisis. Robbie wasn't going to help him out there. If Robbie couldn't imagine Eli out of existence, maybe Eli could imagine himself away instead. Eli's highlight reel got fuzzier and fuzzier, and no new homicidal urges arose. The headache and the muscle twitching stayed, which, now that Robbie thought about it, was probably from too many energy drinks.</p>
<hr/><p>The same day that Robbie had the revelation that Eli had been quiet enough to become dare-he-say-it tolerable, was the night he went to bed and learned that everything was not, in fact, fine.</p><p>It was a Tuesday. Robbie had four more work days to look forward to, and he'd already burned through the sleep boost he'd gotten on Sunday. He'd finished praying, put his rosary away, stripped down to his boxers, and started his nightly breathing exercises, trying not to squeeze his eyes shut too tight but also trying not to let them drift open and accidentally look at the digital clock.</p><p><b> Hi, Robbie, </b> Eli said, pleasantly.</p><p>
  <em>Eli, I'm trying to sleep. Wait until tomorrow so I don't accidentally run the car into a wall.</em>
</p><p>
  <b>Heheh. I'm not Eli. I'm Shredder.</b>
</p><p>And then Robbie saw a flash-image of a little black-haired girl in a school uniform hovering over him, the face peeled off her bloody skull, lidless eyes staring down from meaty sockets. He didn't scream, and he didn't piss himself, but it was a close call. <em> Eli, what the fuck. </em>He opened his eyes, and the dead girl was still hovering over him in the darkened room. He reached up with his hand and she disappeared.</p><p><b> I told you, I'm Shredder, </b> Shredder said. The hallucination was now standing beside Robbie's nightstand. He flicked on the light. He could still see her, but the shadows weren't right, and in a way, he could see right through her at the same time. It was more like he knew what she looked like and knew where she was standing than like she was an afterimage in his eyes. Like when he tried to picture how a cold-air intake might fit inside an engine compartment with his mind. Like a memory. Like he was imagining her. Only he'd never seen this skinned elementary-school girl in his life, and she was talking to him with Eli's voice.</p><p>
  <em>Eli. What are you doing. </em>
</p><p><b> I'm not Eli, I'm Shredder, I told you, </b> said the dead girl, putting her hands on her hips. <b> I'm bored. Let's go cut up bad people. </b></p><p>And then Eli pressed fully into Robbie's mind, hot and alien in a way that the child, in all her hallucinatory horror, was not. <b> Yeah, Robbie, let's go cut up some bad people. Family outing! </b></p><p>Robbie did make a noise now, a long in-drawn wheeze. He stared at and through the little girl as she stared back at him expectantly, and pressed his hands tight over his mouth. She shifted from foot to foot—flickered from foot to foot—and tilted her head down. Her lidless eyes pointed at the floor, showing him just the whites and the bloody parts at the edges. <em> Eli, what the fuck did you do. </em></p><p>
  <b>The simplest way to explain is that I got you pregnant.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>She's a tulpa.</em>
</p><p><b> Claro, </b> Shredder said.</p><p>
  <em>She's your tulpa.</em>
</p><p>
  <b> Well, I did the hard work, but really she's <em>our</em> tulpa. Tulpas need brains to grow in. I had to borrow yours. </b>
</p><p><em> You grew a tulpa in my brain. You... </em> Robbie pried his hands off his face so he could breathe, then clamped them back down so he couldn't scream. A tulpa was an independent consciousness with free will. They took months to destroy. Eli hadn't been trying to brainwash <em> Robbie </em> with those months playing movies in the back of his head, he'd been constructing and indoctrinating this tulpa.</p><p><b>You told me he was <em>nice,</em> </b>Shredder said, rotating abruptly, and then disappeared again and didn't come back.</p><p><em> You had no right. </em> A tulpa was a person. Eli had built a person in Robbie's head, and it was a little zombie girl who wanted to murder all the time. Because of course it was. Of course he had.</p><p><b> Your brain was right there and you weren't using it, </b> Eli said. <b> So. How you feel about that family outing? </b></p><p>“No,” Robbie snarled into the dark.</p><p>
  <b>But my little girl asked so nicely.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>You are sick. That isn't a little girl.</em>
</p><p>
  <b>No, she's more like a baby. She's about two months old. The girl part was a surprise, but I helped her pick her form. Like it? Of course not, you only have eyes for cars. She's very vocal, isn't she. I told her not to bother you until she could speak in real sentences.</b>
</p><p><em> Two months. </em>He breathed out, slowly, and his breath was hot and dry against his hands. He licked his dry lips, felt motor oil welling up under his tongue. He swallowed carefully.</p><p><b> Two months, ten hours a day, seven days a week thinking about her and talking to her and bringing her up, because it's NOT LIKE I HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO FUCKING DO, </b> Eli snarled. <b> Now, are you or are you not angry enough to go kick some ass, you're keeping me in suspense here. </b></p><p>Robbie had a lot of anger, but more than that, he had spite. <em> You must be lonely, </em> he replied, all his muscles trembling. He turned the light off and started his breathing exercises, still sitting on the edge of his bed. Better not lie down until he got some actual saliva in his mouth, instead of oil. <em> It must suck bad to be trapped in my body and never get to murder anyone, ever again. I forgive you for making a tulpa out of my brain. </em></p><p>Eli didn't usually send Robbie emotions except boredom and aggression, but now Robbie felt a wash of anger so intense it felt like his skin would peel right off his back. <b> You sadistic little shit, </b> Eli snarled, and Robbie grinned a hollow, strange grin that bared all his teeth. <em> I said I forgive you. Was that wrong? </em></p><p><b> You <em>like</em> me! </b> Shredder bellowed, appearing right in front of Robbie's closed eyes, and he jerked backward and inhaled a mouthful of motor oil.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>For more information on tulpas, and how identity is a construct and you can share your mind with as many identities as you think is prudent to do so, you can visit r/Tulpas or tulpa.info. It's pretty wild. And if you're a writer, routinely taking on the perspective of imaginary characters and letting them run around in your head, you should learn about tulpas so you know what NOT to do, if you don't want them to actually start talking back.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Shredder settles in to the Reyes family.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Robbie did not choke to death on his own spit, but he ran a low fever the following afternoon, and what had been an annoying cough that morning was painful by the evening. Changing into the Ghost Rider would fix these problems, but Robbie was trying not to do that unless he had a real, external reason. Stopping a spree shooter was a good reason. Busting up a heavily-armed drug ring was another good reason. Those reasons didn't come around every week. He didn't need to escape into becoming the Rider every time he was in a bad mood or stubbed his toe or gave himself a teeny bit of aspiration pneumonia anymore; he had made great strides in anger management.</p><p>Eli had just built a murder-child in his brain. This was fine.</p><p>Now that Shredder had, apparently, received Eli's permission to introduce herself, she kept popping in and out of his thoughts all day, blurry or high-resolution or flickering like a dying fluorescent bulb. At her most visible, he could see past her just fine, even if her body was between him and whatever he was trying to look at, like a dropped 10mm socket, or Canelo announcing the latest shift schedule, or Gabe's teaching aide explaining what Robbie needed to have Gabe work on after class, or Gabe watching him make Tuna Helper and asking if Uncle Eli was bothering him again. “Kind-of,” Robbie said, because he wasn't about to say, “Uncle Eli made a ghost kid out of part of me and now you have a niece named Shredder. She says hi.”</p><p>“Uncle Eli, <em>stop,</em>” Gabe said, banging his fist on the table.</p><p><b> Am I bothering you? </b> Shredder asked, sliding aside so Robbie didn't have to give himself a headache looking at Gabe through her.</p><p>“He's not, actually, he's being kind of quiet,” Robbie said. “It's something—it's not Eli.” He turned back to his pan of pasta, jabbed at a frozen ball of vegetables with a spoon to break it up faster.</p><p><b> You hurt his feelings, </b> Shredder said, still hovering next to Gabe.</p><p>He turned around. “Sorry, I don't mean to be in a bad mood. Are you okay?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Gabe said, staring at him. “You're acting really weird.”</p><p><b> I meant you hurt <em>Eli's</em> feelings, </b> Shredder added.</p><p><em> Tough shit—sorry, Eli has it coming. </em> “I feel weird,” Robbie admitted. “But I'm actually okay. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just seeing things that aren't there, but I can tell what's real and what's not. You don't need to worry.”</p><p>“Okay,” Gabe said, looking worried. “I won't tell.”</p>
<hr/><p>That night, Robbie sat down on the edge of his bed and turned off the light.</p><p>
  <em>Shredder.</em>
</p><p>She popped into visibility right in front of him, glowing as though lit by firelight. Her bleeding, expressionless eyeballs stared back at him.<b> Yes?</b></p><p>Robbie licked his lips. This was a very awkward conversation. <em> I, um. I didn't— </em></p><p>
  <b>You don't want me to be alive.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>Um.</em>
</p><p>
  <b>You don't think I <em>am</em> alive.</b>
</p><p>For such a childlike personality, Shredder was very quick on the uptake. Probably because she shared Robbie's brain. <em> Normally when people get tulpas, they, um. They work very hard to create them. Because they want one. A lot. I, um. </em></p><p>
  <b>Eli wanted me.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>Eli doesn't have to live with you. Not that you're bad! Or hard to live with! I'm sure I could get used to you. Eventually. But you're the person that Eli wanted. Listen to yourself, you actually <b>like</b> him.</em>
</p><p><b> You hate Eli so much that you're going to kill me. </b>Shredder's visible body faded in front of him. He'd never managed any control over whether or how he saw her, and he suddenly understood that her body was just something she imagined for him to see; even with it gone, she was very much there, listening to his responses, grieving. She felt very sad.</p><p><em> Eli made you without my permission, </em> Robbie said. <em> I can't take care of you. And I'm not going to murder people. That's all he wanted. Someone to help make me murder people. </em></p><p><b> I could want other things, </b> Shredder protested. It was bizarre to hear Eli's voice sound so plaintive. &lt;I could sound different.&gt;</p><p>Robbie startled. <em> Why do you sound like Mom. </em></p><p>&lt;I don't,&gt; Shredder said. &lt;You don't remember what she sounded like.&gt;</p><p><em> I need you to go away, </em> Robbie resolved. <em> It's not you. This is not a good place for you. I can't take care of you. I can barely take care of myself and Gabe, and you are a tool, you understand that? You're a tool that Eli created to try to control me, and now he's ignoring us because he's disappointed that you can't do that. This is a bad place, and you should never have been born here, and you need to let me fix it. Okay? Trust me. You don't want to exist here. </em> By the time Robbie finished, his throat was cramping and his stomach felt heavy and cold and his eyes prickled. <em> It's gonna be okay, </em> he said, and took a deep breath in preparation to ignore Shredder out of existence, hopefully some time within the next six goddamn months.</p><p><b> I gotcha kiddo, </b> Eli interrupted.</p><p>Robbie felt Shredder's relief rock through him and he clenched his fists against it. Maybe this was how Eli's plan was going to work: Shredder loved Eli, and her emotions clearly bled into Robbie.</p><p>
  <b>I'll give you all the attention you need to keep kicking. Don't mind us, Robbie. Storytime!</b>
</p><p>And Robbie felt suddenly, abruptly, alone in his mind again. Except for the mild twinges in his head and the irritating twitch starting in a muscle in his neck and the blurred but repellent impressions of Eli's “stories.”</p><p>“Fuck,” he said to the darkness.</p>
<hr/><p>He woke the next morning to the horrible realization that he'd just left a child alone with Eli Morrow for five and a half hours.</p><p>He was still exhausted. His head felt muzzy like he'd been up all night studying. His eye was twitching. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift to see if he could pick up Eli's movie reel, and after he finally managed to stop thinking about the upcoming power bill, he got a mental image of a fancy white-carpeted living room where Shredder was kneeling half-way inside a dismembered torso, knife in one hand, blood up to her elbows, grinning—of course she was grinning, she was always grinning, she didn't have any fucking lips, probably because Eli had based her on an actual child he had actually skinned, and Robbie would want to go throw up now except that that was par for the course with Eli. <em>Shredder, I think you should come to work with me every day.</em></p><p><b>Why,</b> Shredder demanded. <b>You don't want me around.</b></p><p>Robbie tried to think of a nice way to say <em> Just because I think your existence is a horrific violation inflicted on both of us doesn't mean I don't care about your well-being, </em> but before he managed that, Shredder threw her imaginary knife in his mental direction, which was odd because Robbie hadn't bothered to give himself an imaginary body for her to throw it at. He still felt hurt. Emotionally. Probably because he'd hurt Shredder's emotions. <em> I don't think this is a safe place for you, </em> Robbie said. Then, in a fit of unaccustomed honesty, <em> I hate it here. I thought I could handle it until Eli came, but ever since I've just been slogging through and it's so hard. </em></p><p><b>Maybe you need to have a better attitude,</b> Shredder said, sternly. She stood and kicked the torso in front of her, in the blank hole in the back of Robbie's brain. <b>You need to find your purpose and do it. Like this.</b></p><p><em> I have my purpose, </em> Robbie snapped. <em> Sorry. It involves going to work so Gabe and I have money to live on. I want you to come. </em></p><p><b> Yeah. Bond. </b> Robbie wasn't sure who'd said that, it didn't make sense to be Shredder, but she was right there, focusing on him, and then Eli kind of...wafted in, like a smell or a wave of heat. <b> Be good for mama. </b></p><p>Shredder tilted her head, her huge staring eyeballs flickering back and forth. <b> He doesn't like me. </b></p><p><b> I'll come too, </b> Eli assured her, and then Robbie opened his eyes and realized he'd lost ten minutes and he really had to make Gabe's breakfast right now.</p><p>Work was hell.</p><p>Eli had, in the past, tried taunting Robbie with images of Marty or Lenny impaled on hooks and dangling from the engine hoist, or given Robbie flashbacks of Canelo bleeding out on the shop floor after the shooting last year, but when Robbie's only reaction was <em> fuck off, </em> he tended to lose interest after an hour or so. Robbie couldn't tell Shredder to fuck off. He couldn't reliably tell which of them was talking. He found himself patiently explaining the purpose of a torque converter to a voice that turned out to be Eli. Shredder didn't like any of the other techs, and especially not the customers, and she loathed Canelo, and she liked to make enthusiastically gory threats about them, visuals included, because she was a child raised by Eli and didn't know any better. Ignoring Shredder would just send her back into the corners of his mind for Eli to keep programming her, and he couldn't ignore Eli without running the risk of mistaking Shredder for him and hurting her feelings. If he thought the fatigue and the heaviness under his skull were bad last month when Eli was just screwing around with Robbie's subconscious, now that Shredder was up and talking to him it was overwhelming. He felt like a phone with too many apps running. When lunch rolled around, he just lined up at the microwave, stared down at his sour cream tub full of not-really-pozole, and contemplated taking a nap instead.</p><p>Marty nudged him, and Robbie gasped, almost dropped his soup. “Microwave's free. Um. ¿Quieres un Rockstar?”</p><p>“Um. Si. No, um. I can make it.”</p><p>“I got a whole Costco pack, guëy. De nada.”</p><p>This was how Eli was going to get his body: Robbie would be too brain-fogged to eat while hosting him and Shredder at the same time, and then Robbie would pass out from low blood sugar. “Si, gracias,” Robbie managed, and put his soup in the microwave. Marty disappeared somewhere and returned with a Rockstar, snapped it open before handing it to him. Inside the microwave, the steam building in Robbie's sour cream tub popped the lid off because he'd forgotten to lift a corner first, and he jumped and spilled half the Rockstar on his coveralls.</p><p>
  <b>Heheh.</b>
</p><p>Food, caffeine, and sugar-water didn't exactly lift Robbie's fatigue, but he managed to function well enough to finish his shift and pick up Gabe when school let out. Shredder flickered in and out beside him as he trudged up the steps to the main door.</p><p>Kids were milling out through the exit, middle-school kids, teenagers, some short and chubby, some clumsy and gangly, but they were all...they were all so <em> fast. </em> Walking in clumps like they all knew exactly what speed and direction to walk in to stay connected, joking and babbling to each-other, shrugging their shoulders to adjust their backpacks. A girl walked by balancing a fidget spinner on her finger, and then hitched one hip onto the stair railing and began to slide down, her kicking feet flying over the stairs. She looked happy, absorbed in her toy and with the swift motion of her body, balanced on the rail polished by thousands of hands. At the bottom she hopped down into a run and clutched the spinner in her fist.</p><p>Gabe was waiting at the gate, in his chair. Of course he was in his chair, that was how Gabe got around, but he wasn't like the girl; he couldn't slide down a railing and bounce into a jog even though it looked fun. Gabe was...something was wrong with Gabe, he seemed to have trouble pointing his head right, and sure, he moved his arms when he talked more than Robbie did, because he was happier than Robbie, but compared to the other kids, he wasn't at all smooth. It was like he couldn't quite move his body how he wanted.</p><p>Gabe made eye contact with Robbie, squinted at him, and then reversed his chair, running over his aide's toes. She winced.</p><p>“Gabriel! Careful.”</p><p>“That's not—” Gabe said. “Back! School! Sunny, go back!”</p><p>Gabe would never get to balance a fidget spinner on his finger or jog down the stairs and it looked so fun. It wasn't fair.</p><p>“Sunny!” Gabe was scared.</p><p>Robbie stopped himself ten feet from the top of the stairway, raised his hands. “Gabe, it's okay, it's—” His voice cracked. Was Gabe okay? Gabe was fine, he seemed freaked out, but fine, why had Robbie been thinking there was something wrong with him, he was doing great integrating at middle school, why did he think Gabe looked sick?</p><p>
  <b>What's wrong with him?</b>
</p><p>Shredder.</p><p>
  <em>Were you thinking about Gabe with my—my thinking parts?</em>
</p><p>
  <b>I guess. Is he okay?</b>
</p><p>Robbie clenched and unclenched his fists. He felt hot, like he was going to cry or burn up or hit something, right there on the steps of the school. “It's me, Buddy,” Robbie croaked. “Should I...go sit in the car for a minute?”</p><p>“No!” Gabe shouted hurriedly.</p><p>“Did something happen?” Sunny asked Robbie, trying to sidestep around Gabe's chair.</p><p>“No, just. Stay with Gabe, I need to sit down,” Robbie said, and he sank down to his heels on the stairs, staring up at his brother, who watched him with equal parts fear and concern. <em>Don't think with my thinking parts around Gabe. Just. Don't think about Gabe at all. You make me think things I don't want.</em></p><p><b> He's my brother, too, </b> Shredder protested.</p><p><em> Not like he's mine. </em> Robbie took a shuddering breath. He wasn't sure who was so upset but he suspected it might actually be him. <em> I don't—I've never seen Gabe like that, I don't think about him like that. Everyone else does. Strangers think about him like that, but <b>I never did,</b> you had no right. And now he saw me looking at him—he can tell you're not me! </em></p><p><b> Sorry. </b> A subdued apology in Eli's voice.</p><p>
  <em>Why can't that fucker ever apologize, after everything he did to Gabe. And me. And Mom.</em>
</p><p>Shredder appeared, sharp in his half-closed, watering eyes. <b> What did he— </b></p><p><b> It was an accident, </b> Eli interrupted.</p><p>
  <em>Fuck you, Mom and Gabe surviving was the accident.</em>
</p><p>Shredder flickered back out of view. <b>Were they bad?</b></p><p>
  <em>No, they weren't bad. Mom was Mom. Gabe wasn't even born. He shoved Mom down the stairs—</em>
</p><p>
  <b> His mother was trying to cut me off from <em>my</em> brother. Alberto. She was jealous. Look what a sap Robbie is for Gabbie, that's what we used to have, and that bitch tried to destroy that! </b>
</p><p>
  <em>Shredder, that's—Eli, that's bullshit. Even if I am a murdering psychopath, if Gabe got new friends, or a girlfriend, and he wanted to spend more time with them than me, I would let them. I would stand back and let them be happy, because I love Gabe, and his happiness is what's important! I would never. Ever. Hurt anyone Gabe chose. Ever.</em>
</p><p>
  <b>Actually, I was Gabe in this scenario.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>No you fucking were not!</em>
</p><p>“Sunny!” Gabe was yelling from atop the stairs, and from very close, way too close, Gabe's teaching aide, “Do you need a doctor? Um. Insulin thing?”</p><p>“Uh,” Robbie said, looking up. Sunny was just two feet away, well within grabbing range. “Could you give me a little space.”</p><p>Sunny took a half step back. She was still way too close.</p><p>Robbie noticed that Shredder had dropped back; it didn't feel like she was paying attention anymore. Eli was either sulking, or pondering how to play off their little argument to make himself look good to Shredder. He took a deep breath and had a coughing fit. Damn motor oil. “I think it's low blood sugar, yeah,” he said, which probably wasn't very convincing. He wiped his eyes on the cuffs of his hoodie.</p><p>“Robbie?” Gabe had positioned his chair right at the edge of the stairs.</p><p>“Sweetie, back up, you're gonna fall,” Sunny admonished him.</p><p>Robbie stood up and leaned on the stair rail. “It's me. It's me. I'm sorry, Gabe, I, um.” What could he say in front of Sunny? “I felt really weird. But I'm still here.”</p><p>Gabe narrowed his eyes. “Really <em> really </em> weird?”</p><p>Robbie shrugged helplessly. “I'll tell you when we get home. Please. Um. Or I could ask Mrs. Valenzuela, I'm sure if.” He had no excuse for calling her to watch Gabe after his shift with no warning. “I'm sure she'd be happy to see you instead.”</p><p>Gabe stared back at him for a long time, and at last growled and hit himself in the forehead with a loose fist. “You're Robbie,” he snapped, pointing.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“I want to go home with Robbie, because you're Robbie.”</p><p>Sunny looked back and forth between them. “Um. Should I do. Anything?”</p><p>“No, you're good,” Robbie said. “Thanks, Sunny. Bud, is it okay if I come up there?”</p><p>“Robbie can come here.”</p><p>He crept up the steps. Gabe reached his hand out when Robbie got close, and he took it, slowly. “It's me, Buddy.”</p><p>Gabe squeezed back hard. “I know. Robbie, don't go anywhere.”</p><p>Robbie was doing his best. He knew how to keep Eli out of his body, he thought he had a handle on that, but Shredder was...different, she wasn't him but she wasn't <em> not </em> him, and she belonged to his body and it hadn't felt like anything at all when she'd been looking at Gabe through his eyes. But Gabe wasn't asking. Robbie had to hold on somehow. “Okay.”</p><p>“Time for dinner.”</p><p>“You're right, Gabe. Let's go home.”</p>
<hr/><p>That night, dinner was supposed to be chicken with parmesan noodles (Better Homes And Gardens Recipes For Under $3 Per Serving) but they didn't have parmesan cheese, they had cotija, and they didn't have olive oil, just butter, and they didn't have jarred pesto because it was weird and green and expensive, just marinara. But it would definitely have chicken, and noodles. And frozen spinach, because that was healthy and the marinara would cover up the green bits. Robbie got the carrots out, and the cutting board that Eli insisted he use to protect the knives, and then the knife, and then <b> knife! </b></p><p>That was a real knife, it was so shiny and heavy and it felt so good to be really holding a real knife—</p><p>“Whoa,” Robbie said, and put the knife down. He felt the sudden jolt of happiness fade out from under him. “O-kay.”</p><p>The knife on the cutting board was beautiful. It didn't matter that it was a little flimsy and it had a plastic handle, because it was sharp and that's what's most important.</p><p>“Are you weird again?” Gabe asked. He was supposed to be doing a grammar worksheet, but he was just sitting at the kitchen table watching Robbie. Not that Robbie was about to call him on it.</p><p>“Yeah, I'm feeling weird,” Robbie said, and he backed away from the knife and sat down next to Gabe so he couldn't look at it. <em>Shredder, I'm trying to talk to Gabe. Don't think about him.</em></p><p>Shredder felt hurt. <b>But I want to think about him. He's our brother.</b></p><p>Fuck. Robbie leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “Eli, um. He. There's.”</p><p>“Go away, Uncle Eli,” Gabe said.</p><p>“He's not bothering me right now. But he put another voice in my head—”</p><p>“A conscience?” Gabe looked alarmed. “A bad conscience?”</p><p>“No, no.” Robbie sighed. Shredder...yes, Shredder wanted him to cut people up, but she wasn't <em>bad.</em> “It's a little kid.” <b>I'm not <em>really</em> a kid. </b><em>No, you're two months old.</em> “It's. Uh.” This was going to be a surreal phrase. “Eli's kid.”</p><p>“A ghost?”</p><p>“No, he, he made her up and put her in my head.”</p><p>Gabe sat up and relaxed a little. “Oh, like me and Ninja Wolf.”</p><p>“Yes!” Robbie said. Why hadn't he thought of that? That was a perfect analogy. <b>Who's Ninja Wolf?</b> <em>A comic book hero. You'd like him. He cuts up bad people.</em> “Only Ninja Wolf, he's a grown-up, he's studied ninjitsu for years and years, and he has Master Fuji to talk to when he doesn't know what's the right thing to do. But this kid, she just has Eli.”</p><p>Gabe nodded thoughtfully. “Uncle Eli's a good teacher.”</p><p>Robbie's brain made a screeching noise.</p><p>“But he teaches you bad things.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Robbie said weakly.</p><p><b> I don't think he taught me bad things, </b> Shredder interrupted.</p><p>
  <em> Trust me, Gabe knows what he's talking about. </em>
</p><p>“Like. I used to be really mad at you,” Gabe continued. “<em>Really</em> mad. And Uncle Eli showed me how to hurt your feelings. But I don't think that was a good thing to do. It just felt good, because I was so mad.”</p><p>“I'm sorry, Gabe, I should have told you what happened that night.” <b>What?</b> <em>Not now.</em> “I just didn't want you to be scared.”</p><p>Gabe narrowed his eyes at him, looked around the room, and then back at Robbie, blinked. “I forgot?”</p><p>“Uncle Eli's kid lives in my head now,” Robbie reminded him.</p><p>“What's her name?”</p><p>“Shredder.” He got that weird, warped view of Gabe again, and shook his head hard. <b>I'm sorry. I want to see him.</b> It was getting hard to see Gabe as <em>Gabe,</em> his perspective was slipping out of control. <em>Stop. Stop it. Please. </em>“I'm feeling weird right now and it's because she's trying to use my brain.” <b>Tell him hi!</b> “She says hi.” Robbie looked back at Gabe very carefully.</p><p>“Hi, Shredder,” Gabe said, waving, and Robbie felt elated, overjoyed, seen. Gabe was talking to him. No one outside had ever talked to him before. His throat hurt, and not from coughing. “I'm Gabe Reyes.” <em>Holy shit.</em> Robbie had never been this happy as long as he could remember. “I'm Robbie's brother.”</p><p>
  <b>Tell him I'm your tulpa.</b>
</p><p>“She says to tell you she's my tulpa,” Robbie managed, blinking hard. “That's the word for...what she is.” <b>I'm Gabe's sister. Can I be his sister?</b> “Yeah, sure,” Robbie said, swimming in euphoria. “She says she wants to be your sister.”</p><p>“Okay,” Gabe said, and the joy filling Robbie was so intense it was terrifying. He found himself digging his fingernails into the table. He wanted it to stop, he didn't want it to ever end. <b>I'm Gabe's <em>sister,</em> </b>Shredder said, awestruck, and Robbie nodded jerkily. “That's Robbie. Robbie's my big brother. He's your big brother too. He's the best big brother ever. He's brave, and he takes care of me, and he keeps me from getting scared. And he makes delicious food. And he's a really good teacher, even better than Uncle Eli. Because he doesn't teach you bad things, and he'll never ever trick you. Just sometimes he won't tell you things but he'll always tell you someday and he'll love you a lot-a-lot. He's a really good big brother.”</p><p>Robbie dropped forward and thunked his head down on the table, crossed his arms over-top.</p><p>“Robbie, are you okay?”</p><p>“I feel really really weird,” Robbie choked, after a careful breath. He coughed, focused on the feeling of his nose getting crushed against the laminate. “Those were really nice things you said, Gabe. I'm happy. Shredder's happy. I'm just gonna sit here for a bit with my eyes closed.”</p><p>“Okay, Robbie,” Gabe said. “And Shredder.”</p><p><em> Wow. Oh wow. </em> Robbie waited for his internal turmoil to settle. And kept waiting. When he heard Gabe's stomach growling, he realized he had no choice, he had to make dinner, now, cook the food and get it on the table, never mind if he could actually think during the process. He stood up very carefully and poured two cups of orange juice, one for himself and one for Gabe. He swallowed cautiously. It helped loosen the cramp in his throat. <em> Okay. Shredder, I have to cut the carrots. And the chicken. I'll use the knife. </em></p><p>Another debilitating stab of glee.</p><p>
  <em>I need you to stay back so I don't cut myself by accident.</em>
</p><p>
  <b>I'm really good with knives.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>Well, I'm driving my body, and you're really distracting. Maybe if you're very quiet, I'll let you help cut up dinner tomorrow night.</em>
</p><p><b> I want to do it now, </b> Shredder said, and Robbie found himself wanting very badly to pick up the knife, and wait, whoa whoa whoa <em> no, I told you, you get to watch. Please. </em></p><p><b> Okay, Robbie. </b> And Shredder listened. She backed off.</p><p><b> Let our little girl use the knife, Robbie. </b> That was Eli.</p><p><em> I said tomorrow. </em> Robbie got out the carrots, and then the chicken, and stuck a brick of frozen spinach in the microwave. <em> Were you listening in? </em></p><p><b> Of course, </b> Eli replied, which meant no.</p><p><em> Whatever. </em> “I have to cut the carrots into small even pieces,” Robbie explained, “so they all come up to temperature at about the same time. And then the same with the chicken. Watch how I do it. It's a lot different from how you'd cut—” Gabe was listening. <em> From how you'd cut up people. </em></p><p>
  <b>Okay.</b>
</p><p>He made dinner. They ate it. He went to bed, and he was so. So tired.</p>
<hr/><p>Shredder didn't go away.</p><p>Robbie kept his promise the next evening and let her try cutting some potatoes—he wasn't ready for the fireworks that might ensue if he actually let her touch meat, and didn't want to end up bawling with joy into a handful of raw chicken. Her enthusiasm turned out to be greater than her motor control. She cut a chunk out of his left index finger, thankfully stopping when the knife lodged in the side of his fingernail. He wrapped up his fingertip, hoping the skin would, if possible, stick back on, and banned Shredder from knifework unless she could prove she could handle something less dangerous, like a spoon. When Eli noticed she'd damaged their host body, he swore at her in Russian and then dragged her back down into the depths of Robbie's subconscious for more lessons.</p><p>She still hated his co-workers, hated Canelo, begged Robbie to let her cut them up, or to cut them up for her so she could see how people bled outside of Eli's imaginary murder-school. She was ambivalent about Robbie, resented him for the whole “trying to meditate her to death” thing, but still she jumped at any chance he offered her to use his eyes, taste his food, touch the brick wall out behind the auto shop, think with his brain. The most trivial actions and sensations—half a spoonful of canned chili, held in his mouth for a whole minute just feeling the textures with his tongue—overwhelmed her with joy, and because she thought with Robbie's brain, he felt her joy, too. Robbie, when he was in control of his head, felt fury that Shredder was so deprived that she could find ecstasy in such small things, and also joy, his own joy, that he could provide these things for her and make her happy.</p><p>Shredder was also dangerous in ways that Eli could not be. When Eli tried to possess his body, if he put any force at all into it, Robbie could feel him, pins-and-needles in whatever limb he was trying to grab. Probably electromagnetic fluctuations, because Eli was a real ghost. When Shredder tried using the kitchen knife, or eating for herself, or steering the car, or turning a wrench, it didn't feel like anything strange was happening, even if she put all her considerable strength behind it; it just felt like Robbie, moving. He had no way to know who was moving his body unless he stayed alert to his every thought and action. And she wasn't just subtler than Eli; she could do things to him. When she'd accidentally cut him, once Robbie had put pressure on his finger so he stopped bleeding all over the potatoes, he'd found that it didn't even hurt. It should have hurt. Robbie could tell there was pain coming from his finger, but he wasn't feeling any of it. Shredder wasn't letting him.</p><p>According to what Robbie had read about them, young tulpas like Shredder were fragile and vulnerable. They could lose consciousness and even lose their personality, dissipate, if their host refused to think about them for long enough, as Robbie had tried to do to Eli. Young tulpas had difficulty accessing their host's motor centers and senses. Shredder was young in personality, but Eli had trained her hard and persistently before allowing her to reveal herself. She was a weapon, and a tool.</p><p>The most dangerous thing about her, the part that made Robbie incapable of harming her in any way that mattered, was that Shredder loved Gabe. Gabe was cautious of her but not scared, and he liked the idea of a little sister, but Shredder adored Gabe with an almost religious fervor, because he was the first physical person who'd ever spoken to her, and had therefore confirmed her to be real.</p><p>She loved Gabe almost as much as she loved Eli.</p><p>Robbie was her host. Robbie was her home, her body, her shelter, her provider, her guide. But Eli was her father-creator-god, her first teacher, the only person who'd given her purpose. Even though Robbie couldn't help but care about her, and Eli had created her knowing how infuriating it was to be trapped inside an uncooperative host body, Shredder's loyalty belonged to Eli.</p>
<hr/><p><b>When are we going to decapitate somebody?</b> Shredder demanded as Robbie was trying to enjoy his ice-cream. He and Gabe hadn't been to La Michoacana for months, but it was a bright hot Saturday and Robbie had just gotten paid. They'd gotten an outdoor table under a cheery red awning. <b>Or road-haul them with our chains. Eli says you can make any weapons you want when you're the Rider, he says being the Rider with you is like being the same person. When are we gonna do that?</b></p><p><em>We're not the same person,</em> Robbie snapped back. <em>We're never the same—we can't, I can't let us be the same.</em></p><p>
  <b>You're changing the subject.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>I don't want to be the Rider—</em>
</p><p>
  <b>You're lying.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>I'm trying not to be the Rider. I don't know what Eli showed you, but it's not as fun as it looks.</em>
</p><p>
  <b>You like it.</b>
</p><p>
  <em> Because there's something wrong with me. It hurts. I don't feel like me, I feel out of control, and it's not just that it's harder to tell myself apart from Eli when I'm like that. I'm scared—the Rider doesn't feel much except anger, but you know what I mean—I'm scared I'll kill an innocent person, every time. And it <b>hurts,</b> really bad, changing one way or the other. </em>
</p><p>
  <b>I can make it stop hurting.</b>
</p><p>She could. Shredder could cut off Robbie's pain just like he could pull a fuse from a fusebox, and then he could sit in the car and change, slowly, and watch the flesh char away from his hands. He could touch the ashes of his face, feel his faceplates close around his skull, watch his leather skin seal up his burning bones. Robbie had the wild thought that if he could watch it happen, he'd somehow know which parts of him survived when he became the Rider. <em> Please—don't. </em></p><p><b> You want it to hurt so you stay scared of changing, </b> Shredder said, accurately. <b> But you shouldn't be scared or hurt. The Rider is a good thing, it's what Eli brought you back for, so you can clean up the streets and make the city safe for good people. </b></p><p>Robbie's ice cream was melting over his fingers and puddling on the outdoor table. <em> Clean up the streets? What'd Eli feed you, bad eighties cop shows? </em></p><p>
  <b>So what do you call what you guys do?</b>
</p><p>
  <em>When I lose control of myself, the Rider wants to hurt someone, and I try to make sure we only hurt people who deserve it.</em>
</p><p>
  <b>You can say 'kill.'</b>
</p><p><em>And we kill—</em> Robbie took a deep breath, shut his eyes. <em>If I find someone who's tortured, killed, or—or, but I have to be sure. I have to know, if they killed someone, was their life in danger? Were they in control of themselves? Did they have an option not to do what they did? And did they even do it. I can't. I can't ever take back the decision to kill someone.</em></p><p><b> He wants to catch them in the act, </b> Eli interjected. <b> Like a peeping tom. </b></p><p>Robbie felt a flash of irritation that was his and also not his. <b>Eli, I'm trying to talk to our host and whenever he thinks about you he [hate-rage-terror] and he gets distracted,</b> Shredder said. Then she said something in Russian.</p><p>Eli replied in Russian. They were talking right in the front of his mind and Robbie had no idea what they were saying. He didn't know how to access any of Shredder's memories, let alone the part of his brain that Eli had, apparently, taught Russian to.</p><p>
  <b>Oh, no, we're scaring him. Give me a chance, Eli, I know I can talk to him!</b>
</p><p><b> Whatever, </b> Eli said. <b> There's always plan B, remember. </b></p><p>
  <em>Plan B, what's plan B?</em>
</p><p><b> Don't worry about it, </b> Shredder soothed, waving away his panic despite Robbie's attempts to hold onto it. <b> Robbie. I know you want to kill people who deserve to die. You think it's wrong that people get away with hurting each-other, and you're angry when you can't fix what's wrong. But when you wait until you're absolutely sure—well, how sure to you want to be? Ninety percent? Ninety-nine point nine-nine percent? You can always be wrong. And while you're waiting, those people can go on to keep hurting the vulnerable. </b></p><p>
  <em> I thought <b>you</b> wanted to hurt people. </em>
</p><p>
  <b>Yeah. I want to do the right thing.</b>
</p><p>Oh, no. <em> Oh, no. </em></p><p>Robbie's ice cream was entirely melted. The cone in his hand was sodden. Shredder wasn't a child-version of Eli, she wanted to be <em> good. </em></p><p>
  <b>There's a lot of people who are very rude and unkind and lazy, and they take up valuable resources from nice people who need them. Like Gabe. He's nice. More people should be like Gabe. But that pig you work for, he's not. He doesn't hire enough people to do all the work he wants the shop to do, and sometimes he steals from them. That's against the rules. It's not hard to follow rules. </b>
</p><p><em> No, it's not, </em> Robbie replied. <em> Except. Except sometimes it is. Sometimes I—I've hurt people. When I knew I shouldn't. </em></p><p><b>So don't do it again. </b>Shredder's tone was stern.</p><p>
  <em>I'm trying. That's why I don't change as long as I have a choice.</em>
</p><p>
  <b>You're hurting people when you don't change, because then the bad people get to keep living.</b>
</p><p>This made total logical sense and Robbie had no argument against it. <em> I don't care, </em> he said instead, crushing the ice cream cone in his hand. <em> Bad shit happens. I don't have time to fix it. It's none of my business until it affects me and Gabe. Anything else is just a waste of time. </em></p><p><b> Fuck you, </b> Shredder said, stabbing Robbie under the ribs with her disillusionment. She ducked deeper into his head and went silent.</p><p>Robbie blinked. Cars were rolling by, beyond the sidewalk. The sun had shifted, and the edge of the awning was no longer shading his eyes. The ice cream had dripped through the slats of the table and onto his jeans, as well as down the underside of his forearm. Gabe was watching him.</p><p>“I'm okay,” Robbie said.</p><p>“You're not hungry?” Gabe hadn't finished his own ice cream, either, the different flavors pooling in a rainbow soup in his paper bowl.</p><p>“No, I...I got distracted, thinking.” He pulled a pile of napkins out of the dispenser and got to work mopping himself up, then the smaller mess that leaked from the seams of Gabe's bowl.</p><p>“Shredder's not hungry?”</p><p>“I don't think so.” Arguing with Eli was as useful as arguing with a brick, but Shredder was different. Shredder believed in right and wrong, she just...she thought murdering people by flaying them alive was the right thing to do, and wasn't it? Some people, people like Eli, deserved to be flayed alive. Eli couldn't be unique, surely the world suffered a surplus of human sacrificers and serial killers and coke-addled hitmen. The Rider could run them down and tear them apart like they deserved, and then the Rider would be happy, Eli and Shredder would be happy, the warped part of Robbie would be happy, and everyone else would be safer. But finding serial killers took months. Robbie couldn't devote his life to investigating homicides, finding the killers, judging them, and tracking them down; he didn't have the skills, and he had to work so he and Gabe could have a roof over their heads, and food, and everything that made Gabe's life a tiny bit easier. The Rider could rob a bank, but that was—he couldn't explain the money. He wouldn't do it. People would get hurt, the wrong people. (It would be wrong.)</p><p>He wanted to explain all this to Shredder, but it just snarled up into a messy ball in his head, and he couldn't tell if she was even listening to him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Uber!verse Gabe knows about Robbie's possession situation, but they've never actually talked about the Ghost Rider thing. The reason Gabe is immediately ready to talk to Shredder is that in the comics he was possessed by Eli for several months. He knows the body-sharing drill.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eli and Shredder make their move.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On Saturday night, instead of going to bed, he got in the car and drove to Hollywood.</p>
<p>While Robbie technically worked at Canelo's full-time, sometimes, when business was slow, he would receive free...unpaid time off. And by the end of most months, even when Canelo's was busy, Robbie started to inventory the food in the refrigerator, over and over, in case the next envelope of cash came late, or short, or simply wasn't enough. So Robbie did ride-share on the side.</p>
<p>One might wonder how a late-sixties muscle car with nine-hundred horsepower, no airbags, and no air conditioning might perform when forced to play taxi-cab in stop-and-go traffic, and the answer was “not well.” The Charger was not happy. Robbie was not happy. Most passengers, unless they happened to be fellow automotive enthusiasts, were not happy by the time they got out.</p>
<p>Tonight's passenger was already unhappy before she got in. She had bone-straight hair and a deep fake tan, hollow eyes, and a mask-like expression that Eli said was from botox or benzodiazepines. “Is this a fucking prank,” she'd snapped when Robbie pulled up to the curb, and after Robbie had assured her that there were no hidden cameras, she'd folded herself inside and slammed his door. As they drove, she checked her phone over and over, fiddled with the hem of her skirt as it tried to ride up her thighs.</p>
<p>Robbie kept his eyes on the road and tried not to hit any potholes.</p>
<p>He didn't know what this white lady was so upset about as they cruised West on the 101 toward a very expensive Hollywood nightclub. There was never a good reason to slam his door, but she had a right to her bad mood. Maybe she was heading out to work. Maybe the nightclub was owned by gangsters, like Eli's old boss. Maybe that fitted green minidress and dangly necklace were the most valuable things she owned. Wasn't Robbie's business.</p>
<p><b>Maybe she's a drug dealer,</b> Shredder suggested.</p>
<p>
  <em> Drug dealers tip. I don't think I'm that lucky. </em>
</p>
<p><b> You suck. I'm not sorry. </b> She ducked back down out of Robbie's thoughts, but he could feel her, feel something. A weight in his skull. Concentration. He checked for Eli, found the edges of him woven through the car.</p>
<p>He kept his eyes on the road. Put his blinker on, slipped a lane to the left to avoid an upcoming slow-down.</p>
<p>Why was he here?</p>
<p>Why was he driving?</p>
<p>It was eleven at night. He should be sleeping, he needed eight hours a night, that's what the doctors always say, and he was getting six on a good night, six days a week. <em> Santos, </em> he couldn't even drink yet and he was destroying his body and brain trying to keep himself and Gabe alive. If he couldn't be sleeping, he should at least be at night school, bettering himself so he'd have a prayer of moving out of Hillrock Heights before he got shot to death and Gabe got assaulted, again. But here he was, an Uber sticker on his window, selling his time and his passenger seat, because there was no-one else to take care of his family.</p>
<p>Gabe was alone right now. Sleeping, hopefully, but Robbie didn't know. He might be scared. He'd been worried for months that Robbie might get possessed again and never come back. If Mom and Dad were around, Gabe would at least have them, no matter what happened to Robbie.</p>
<p>If Mom and Dad were still around, though, Robbie wouldn't <em> be </em> possessed. Dad could've saved up and moved when the city around Hillrock grew brighter and quieter. Just ten blocks one way or the other and they'd be clear of most of the shootings. Robbie'd only stolen the Charger and gotten shot to death because he'd been alone and desperate and stupid.</p>
<p>Mom could have been there for Gabe, talking to him and playing games with him, keeping him from retreating into his head, and all the progress he'd made in the last two years could have come long ago when he was little.</p>
<p>Mom could have been there for Robbie. Dad, too. He remembered resting his head in Mom's lap, sprawled half-on, half-off their old pink-and-green couch watching <em> Herbie </em> together, remembered her voice, <em> Papí 's coming home soon. Are you going to ask him what he saw up high on the power poles? </em> He remembered his dad folding him into his big safety jacket with the shining white-and-yellow stripes, the heavy canvas sleeves dangling a foot past his hands, and then lifting him overhead to inspect the ceiling light in the kitchen, the little dead bugs in the bottom, his dad's strong hands around his ribs. Both his parents, taken from him.</p>
<p>And then he'd had to raise himself and Gabe at the same time. And then he'd been shot to death in an alley.</p>
<p>It wasn't fair. He'd just been a little kid, he'd needed them. He still needed them. That was why he'd trusted Eli so fast, he needed somebody, anybody, some advice, somebody to talk to; he needed Mom and Dad, but they were gone and they were never, ever coming back.</p>
<p>He still didn't know what had happened to them, but surely Eli had something to do with it. If it weren't for Tio Maldito and his mafia dealings, they'd still be alive.</p>
<p>He clenched his teeth and gripped the wheel harder, feeling the tendons of his hands strain against his driving gloves. He pressed the gas a little deeper, felt his engine breathe. The Charger pulled against the pavement, lurched from sixty to eighty miles an hour.</p>
<p>“Hey, not to impugn your driving skills but I don't want to be late from you getting pulled over,” the passenger snapped, and Robbie hissed. He had bigger problems than cops, he was working through a personal revelation, thinking clearly for the first time since he could remember—</p>
<p>Wait. He was on an Uber trip. He had pax in the car. This was not the time for personal revelations and mulling over his life, he couldn't be angry around people, that was dangerous.</p>
<p>But he <em> was </em> angry. Very angry, and not for anyone else's sake this time: for his own sake, for what he'd lost. Another Robbie in another world was going to technical school right now, maybe not satisfied, maybe dreaming about some fancy college, maybe wishing he had time to go to concerts or money to buy mods for his car, but that Robbie wouldn't know what it was like to go to bed hungry, or the misery of watching his brother suffer for the lack of medications or equipment he couldn't afford. Robbie, and especially Gabe, had done nothing to deserve this.</p>
<p>But he had a pax in the car right now. He felt his pulse pounding through his throat. His anger wasn't safe for the pax. He had to concentrate on his breathing, settle himself, think about something different. <em> Most Holy Mary, I entrust to you this knot, I'm too angry and I can't stop myself from thinking about my life, and I'm afraid I'm going to burn my passenger to death if I don't calm down. Please, I just need to calm down for another twenty minutes. I can't be the Rider. The Rider doesn't help anything. </em></p>
<p>But he wanted to be angry, and he wanted to be the Rider.</p>
<p>
  <em>I don't want to be this angry. I want to stay me. I have to!</em>
</p>
<p>Why? His life was unjust and miserable, and the only blessing in it was that the Rider was incapable of feeling misery, and a perfect instrument to express his rage at that injustice. He wanted to be the Rider. It was the only time he ever felt alive.</p>
<p>
  <em>Being the Rider is like dying. I don't feel like me. That's why I used to want it.</em>
</p>
<p>When he was the Rider, the world was crystal clear. He wanted to feel his body burning, feel the roar of his engine where his heart had been. He wanted to live in his body, scream with his throat.</p>
<p>Robbie sucked in a breath. He felt glitchy. It was hard to focus on the road, he felt like he was seeing it for the first time in years, his body felt suddenly unfamiliar, he was thinking thoughts he'd never dared let himself think, and he couldn't stop himself. His passenger was staring at him, her mouth a tight red line, and Robbie looked into the rear-view mirror and saw his pupils sparking. Dark oily tears had welled in the corners of his eyes. He smelled gasoline, tasted engine fumes. He was already starting to change, and even if his flesh hadn't begun to burn, his mind was out of control and his body and the car would follow.</p>
<p>The engine was hot. Robbie's breath was steaming. His thoughts were racing, and he realized, abruptly, that they weren't exactly his—they were <em> Robbie, </em> but not <em> him, </em> they had his history but not his decisions. They had memories he lacked.</p>
<p><b> You had a seam in your mind, </b> Shredder explained. <b> All I had to do was push a little. </b></p>
<p>Tulpas, Robbie remembered from his research, were very, very good at creating other tulpas. <em> You made another me. </em></p>
<p>
  <b>You did most of it. You walled parts of yourself away.</b>
</p>
<p>Eli butted in. <b>I warned you not to bottle up your aggression, Robbie. Heh-heh.</b></p>
<p>There was a window in the early life of a thoughtform where they were vulnerable. Any errant thought, nurtured enough, could become a conscious and thinking tulpa; early consciousness, if dismissed as just another intrusive thought, could return to the mental flotsam from which it arose. Dismissing the thoughts flooding his mind right now was not an option, though, because that was how they'd coalesced in Robbie's subconscious in the first place. They would just keep bubbling up, because they were true.</p>
<p>“I'm pulling over,” he announced.</p>
<p>“What?” the pax demanded, gripping her purse. “We're in the middle of the goddamn freeway!”</p>
<p>Robbie signaled, braked, signaled, worked his way to the right shoulder, slowed. Drove over an old t-shirt and a Gatorade bottle full of suspicious liquid. “Engine trouble.”</p>
<p>“Shit,” she said, pulling out her phone.</p>
<p>He stopped hard. The phone went flying as she jerked against the shoulderbelt. He released the passenger seatbelt with a mental twitch. “Out. Get out of the car.”</p>
<p>“It's the middle of the goddamn freeway, I'm not getting out of the car until I figure out another ride—” she protested, retrieving her phone. “You know your seatbelt latch is faulty?”</p>
<p>“Get out! Get out right now!” Robbie yelled, swinging open his right-hand door. “The car's gonna explode! We're gonna die!”</p>
<p>She tumbled out the door and backed hastily against the concrete barrier, stumbling a bit in her heels. The moment she got clear, Robbie slammed his door shut again and took off, leaving two strips of rubber smoking on the pavement.</p>
<p><em> That's just me. That's just me thinking. I'm angry, that's my anger. </em> As he pressed the gas and weaved between the night-owls and truckers on the freeway, he tried to concentrate, tried to make an image in his head. It was hard. He tried to picture himself, the rough dimensions of a human form, but with a hollow in the middle where he'd cut bits out.</p>
<p>He had to pump the brakes, slowing from one-ten to seventy, when three cars blocked his path, one in each lane. <em> I'm so angry. I miss Mom and Dad. </em></p>
<p>Where had he left off? He was a hollow person, like a cookie cutter. The part of him that couldn't stop thinking about how he didn't deserve to grow up in foster care, that wanted to burn and scream and rage, that was the cookie. <em> That's just me. That's just me, thinking. I'm me. That's my anger. </em></p>
<p>He felt shocked, suddenly. He was real, he was Robbie. He was nineteen and he'd died, and now he was here, alive, seeing the world in a way he hadn't been allowed in years.</p>
<p>
  <em>Yes. You're—I'm me. I'm seeing things differently, because I've been afraid to think about...about anything that might make me weak or lose control. I'm me. If you—I stay me, I'm not gonna bottle myself up like that again. Because everything I just thought was true, and hiding that would be lying.</em>
</p>
<p>He was Robbie. He <em> was </em>, he was part of Robbie, and he'd been cut away, stuffed down, and forgotten just for—what, being too sad? For thirteen years?</p>
<p>
  <em>Yes. You're—I'm me. I'm part of me. I'm so sorry, I won't do it again. I was just a kid. I was scared.</em>
</p>
<p><em> He'd </em> been scared?</p>
<p>
  <em>Yeah. I was scared.</em>
</p>
<p>Angry, too.</p>
<p>
  <em>I was so angry. They had me psychologically evaluated. I was a kid, I was scared they were gonna take Gabe away because I was bad. They would have. I had to prove I could control myself.</em>
</p>
<p>They shouldn't have done that. They shouldn't have threatened to take away a grieving child's only family to make him stop biting and punching people, they should have given him space when they noticed he was getting overwhelmed.</p>
<p>
  <em>I hated foster care. But I had to stay with Gabe.</em>
</p>
<p>It had been horrible.</p>
<p>
  <em>Yes.</em>
</p>
<p>He was so angry.</p>
<p>
  <em>Yes.</em>
</p>
<p>But he was alone in the car. Foster care was almost two years ago. The mercenaries who'd shot Robbie were dead or in jail. Eli was dead, and Robbie didn't yet know how to make him any deader. He was alive (again) and he'd made a better home for Gabe, and they were scraping by together. He'd give anything for Gabe. If he had to die again, he'd do it, but he hoped he wouldn't have to.</p>
<p>He let off the gas, wiped motor oil off his cheeks, worked his jaw. His mouth was so dry it hurt, and all he could taste was the Charger's exhaust, but he still had a tongue. He still had lungs.</p>
<p>He felt fragile and raw and new, but he felt like just one person. One whole person, who was sad and angry and afraid and felt like he couldn't contain himself, but maybe if he pulled over, maybe if he reeled his senses back out of the car and drank a little water and did his breathing exercises, he could stay himself for the rest of the night—</p>
<p><b> I ever tell you I used to inform for the FBI? </b> Eli mused. <b> I had a case number and everything. You know what's funny, I had a slip-up back in '97, the LAPD pegged me for road-hauling this coke-dealer who turned out to be some councilman's cousin. I mean, I hate to admit it, but they <em>had</em> me. I was sloppy. </b></p>
<p>
  <b> But because I was in bed with the Feebs, they couldn't do fuck-all! They had a <em>witness,</em> they had my <em>plates,</em> but I had that golden ticket outta there and I got to walk past all those scowling faces on my way out the front door—and they called themselves cops! </b>
</p>
<p><em> They could have got you off the street in '97? </em> Robbie demanded. All of Robbie. He felt his pulse rising again, out of control. <em> That was two years before you tried to kill Mom and Gabe. They could have stopped you? </em></p>
<p>
  <b>Sure could.</b>
</p>
<p>“<em>Fuck!</em>” Robbie screamed. He knew cops were bad news, always happy to bust up a party but late to every gang battle, but he'd never imagined they'd let a self-proclaimed <em>satanic serial killer</em> waltz out of their precinct alive. Couldn't they have arrested Eli? Told the FBI to fuck off and prosecuted him for murder? Harrassed him until he fled LA, or leaked his FBI connections to the wrong gangster? They'd shot him in a fire-fight in '99, but if they'd done it just six months sooner, Gabe would be able to run and play and do all those things his body wouldn't let him do, and Mom and Dad could raise him instead of Robbie, who was trying to parent out of books, and was so unstable that last year he'd snapped and <em>attacked Gabe—</em></p>
<p>Fucking cops. Fucking cops!</p>
<p>
  <b>Is it happening?</b>
</p>
<p>
  <b> Yes, I do think our boy is finally gonna pop. And <em>that's</em> why you always need a plan C! </b>
</p>
<p>They'd let Eli keep killing people for two more years! And the FBI, for longer than that!</p>
<p>
  <b>I had my own house, all legal and shit. I got a lotta noise complaints. But I just, you know, threw 'em a wad of cash now and then when the uniforms showed up.</b>
</p>
<p>The neighbors could hear Eli's victims screaming through the walls and the cops never did anything. They were playing games with people's lives, hoping their pet psychopath would feed them something useful enough to somehow outweigh all the people he killed.</p>
<p>Robbie's right foot twitched involuntarily, and the Charger shot forward. He was well past Hollywood now, heading West with no destination in mind, and the car was getting hotter and hotter, the tachometer nudging into the redline. Robbie couldn't inhale, there was no room in his lungs with the exhaust fumes pouring continually up from his throat. His lungs hurt. He felt sweat breaking over his back and palms, felt his gloved hands slip against the wheel. His bones heated. The fumes got hotter and hotter, and as his engine revved higher, it started to spit out fuel with the exhaust, still burning, that lit up the oil in his mouth and nose. His tongue and throat burned. He spat fire all over himself.</p>
<p><b> He's hurting, </b> Shredder said, and the pain ebbed, leaving him with just his anger. His steering wheel was burning through his hands; he could feel his palms go numb layer by layer. His eyes started to boil and for an instant he couldn't see, until they collapsed, flesh and oil running down his shriveling cheeks, and he stared down the road with burning eyesockets. He recalled, distantly, that he'd wanted this; he'd wanted to watch himself burn and watch his body die, surrender to his own anger, but now, abruptly, he realized that he <em> was </em> his anger, his anger was him, and it wasn't fair that he had to die over and over to reach that part of himself. This thought made him angrier. The Charger whipped between the freeway traffic, tires smoking.</p>
<p><b> Eli? </b> Shredder sounded scared. <b> I'm. I can't. </b></p>
<p><b> Don't worry about his pain, he's a big boy, </b> Eli said.</p>
<p>Robbie wasn't in pain, and then suddenly he was, heat and thirst. His lungs were hollow and his heart was faltering, all his flesh ached, his wrists were in agony where they met his numb hands. He was almost gone, almost free.</p>
<p><b> I can't think, </b> Shredder said, very soft. <b> It's dark. Robbie? </b></p>
<p>
  <em>Shredder?</em>
</p>
<p>Nothing but the roar of his engine, under his hood and in his chest. His body was growing numb. The Charger was full of steam. Robbie glanced in the mirror, and that—that was what he looked like, burnt flesh peeling away, chrome plates pressing up between scraps of skin, fire crackling between his teeth. He realized he was dead. His body had just died, he'd cooked his own brain, and his brain was where Shredder lived. <em> Shredder! </em></p>
<p><b> Oops, </b> said Eli. <b> What a waste. </b></p>
<p><em> You motherfucker! </em> Robbie snarled, and the car finally, finally exploded, poured flame into the cabin, scoured his bones clean, and wrapped him in his other skin, the Rider's skin. <em> She was a little kid! </em></p>
<p>
  <b>What, you got attached already?</b>
</p>
<p>
  <em>She was a person! She was alive!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <b>Uh...yes! I bet that really pisses you off. </b>
</p>
<p><em> She was innocent! </em> The Rider snarled and gunned the motor. They were flying through the Valley now, weaving through traffic, phasing through cars they couldn't avoid, leaving four trails of flame.</p>
<p><b> Yes, innocent people tend to die around you when you're possessed by the ghost of a satanic serial killer, </b> Eli agreed. <b> Now whose fault is that? </b></p>
<p>
  <em>You!</em>
</p>
<p>
  <b> I'm <em>you,</em> remember. You gonna punch yourself in the face? </b>
</p>
<p><em> Fuck! </em>Flames spurted between his teeth and out the vents of his skull, long jets escaping to lick the roof and sides of the cabin.</p>
<p><em> Fucking cops left you alive for two years. </em> The Rider whipped the car around, and Eli ripped open the air in front of their front bumper, a great fire-rimmed black void. <b>That's no fair, they were just following orders.</b></p>
<p>The Rider punched the gas and emerged from Eli's portal across the street from the LAPD West Hollywood station, a squat windowless brick building kitty-corner from a bail bondsman. <b> My house is up the hill, we should swing by, kick out any squatters. It's got a six-car garage, you'll love it. </b> There were no obvious entrances, so the Rider yanked the handbrake, spun their rear wheels, and then launched them right through the wall.</p>
<p>No-one died.</p>
<p>The Rider waded, screaming, through the hood of the car, over the rubble he'd created, and out into the main office, low cubicles, fluorescent lights. He stooped, reached through his own shadow, and spooled a long hot chain out from the metal of the car.</p>
<p>It was almost midnight and half the desks were empty. From the other half of the desks, officers in uniform and detectives in sport coats jumped to their feet, some to dive out of view and others to draw their service pistols. Someone screamed “Bomb!” Gunshots crackled and bullets pinged on the Rider's faceplates, reverberated through his skull and punched through his skin. He swung his chain and hit two men in the head. The rest ducked.</p>
<p>“<em>Who was in charge twenty years ago?</em>” he shrieked. “<em>Who was here?</em>”</p>
<p>They just kept shooting him. The Rider felt cold lead dripping down his bones. He spotted a gray-haired man just as he shot him in the eyesocket. <em> <b>Him.</b> </em> He dropped through the floor and peeled himself up out of the shadows under the man's desk. Grabbed him by his suit jacket and slammed him against the wall. <em> Why didn't you help? Why didn't you keep Eli Morrow away from my family? </em></p>
<p><b> These assholes <em>shot </em> me, </b> Eli joined in. <b> I was supposed to have a trial! Even if they put me on Death Row, I'd still be around, and I'd have fanmail! They coulda done a bio-pic about me! Twenty years, I get back, and all I've got is two measly newspaper articles, not even Page 1! </b></p>
<p>“<em><b>Why?</b></em>” the Rider shrieked, shaking him. “<em>I needed you! My family needed you!</em>”</p>
<p>The cop raised his gun and emptied it into the Rider's chest. The Rider coughed hot lead at him, burning holes through the man's shirt.</p>
<p>“<em>You hurt people,</em>” he snarled. “<em>You hunt people, you rip families apart. And you let innocent people die! We need you, and you won't do your fucking job, </em><b>and you fucking shot me in the back! I bet you were there that night, huh, Gordo? Took down the big bad serial killer from a hundred yards away, fifty on one, how was that fair?! I deserved a trial! Dahmer got a fucking trial, and he ate people!</b>”</p>
<p>“Hey-hey,” said a voice behind him, as he coiled the chain around one fist to slam into the old man's ribs. “Sounds like you, uh. Have some complaints? Maybe you weren't happy with how we charged, or investigated, or—um.”</p>
<p>The Rider snapped his head around, dropped his chained fist to his side. There was a thin cop in a uniform six feet away, hands empty and spread apart, premature white hair and crows' feet and wide brown eyes. “If you want to let Detective Stanhope go, he's a month from retiring, he's got grandkids—I could get you some tea? Coffee?”</p>
<p>“Get the fuck away from him, Miranda, that's an order!” one of the other cops bellowed.</p>
<p>“I'm sorry if we failed you,” the skinny white-haired cop said, standing his ground. “I'm willing to listen, so we can do better.”</p>
<p>“<em><b>Bullshit,</b></em>” the Rider hissed, but he let the old man fall. A dozen bullets slammed into his skull, and one of them bounced off and nicked the skinny cop in the forehead. “<em>Get back.</em>”</p>
<p>The cop's hand shook as he wiped blood out of his eyebrow. “Not 'till I know you're not gonna hurt my buddies. I want everybody to get home safe tonight, even you. It sounds like you're going through some heavy stuff and maybe I can help. You got a name?”</p>
<p>The Rider cocked his head. Behind him, the old cop had reloaded, started shooting up through his ribcage from the ground. The Rider stomped on his hand. The man cursed and punched uselessly at the back of his knee.</p>
<p>“Hey-hey, careful,” said the skinny cop. “Please. You're not hurt, and he's just scared. Why don't we leave? Why don't we talk?”</p>
<p>“Miranda! I will report you, I will fire your ass!”</p>
<p>What was he doing. He'd just picked a fight with an entire police station. Sure, there had to be bad cops here, but he didn't know who they were—who was on the take and who was a thug and who was a killer—and the one in front of him, looking the Rider in the eyesockets while bullets flew past his head, seemed to be genuinely kind. “<em> You didn't help,</em>” he growled, advancing on the skinny cop. “<em>My mom died. You could have stopped him.</em>”</p>
<p>“I'm so sorry,” the cop said. “I miss my mom every day, I'd probably go crazy if she'd been murdered. Talk to me. Help us do better.”</p>
<p>The longer the Rider stood there next to this cop, the greater the odds his own buddies would shoot him by accident. And he was tired. And he missed his mom. And his dad. And his sister/cousin/daughter he'd only known for a week. He wanted to sit at a park bench with this cop and some hot cocoa and talk about his mom, and at that thought, he realized how dangerously close he was to snuffing out. <b>What? We didn't even get started! Kid! </b>He revved his engine, pouring more heat under his skin, then melted through the floor and back into the car, reversed out into the street, and took off, trailing a pack of squad cars.</p>
<p><em> We're shutting down. Get us out of here while I'm still angry enough to make this work, </em> he demanded, and Eli took some of his power and ripped open another portal for them to dive into. They emerged across the city, back in East Los, in a grubby alley. The engine died and his fires guttered out the moment they landed. Flesh steamed over his bones. In a fluke of forethought, he pulled the Rider's skin back into himself so his clothes could return. He panted, bent forward, and ground his head into his steering wheel, whimpering through his teeth.</p>
<p>He missed Mom and Dad. Oh, he missed them so badly, even though it had been so many years. He remembered Dad rushing out the door, Mom assuring him that they'd be right back, handing Gabe a rattle to hold, and locking the door behind her as she followed Dad. It couldn't have been five minutes before Robbie was seized by the fear that they'd never come back, but he had to be brave for Gabe or Gabe would cry, and five minutes turned into an hour, and the hours kept coming, and then it was night in the dark apartment, and then it was the next day, and Robbie didn't know what to do—</p>
<p>He still didn't know what to do. He was trying, but he'd just killed his own sister because he couldn't stop himself from turning into a monster—</p>
<p>
  <b>I'm here.</b>
</p>
<p>“Shredder!” Robbie rasped. He jerked upright as if he'd be able to see her standing in front of the car—and he could, there she was, projecting herself leaning against the cinderblock wall of the back of the hair salon, her bare eyeballs gleaming in his headlights. “I thought I killed you!”</p>
<p><b>You didn't mean to,</b> she said, looking at the asphalt. <b>And. I'm not dead now.</b> She looked him in the eyes, and Robbie forced himself not to look away. <b> Sorry. Can I come in? </b></p>
<p><em>Of course. You're already 'in,'</em> Robbie said. He opened the passenger door for her, even though her body wasn't physical and she could have just imagined herself into the car. <em> I'm so glad you're okay. I thought you'd died. </em></p>
<p>
  <b>I'm better now.</b>
</p>
<p>Eli intruded. <b>Mija, I had no idea that was going to happen. This was supposed to bring us closer. Like a family. </b></p>
<p>
  <em>Eli, fuck off. Shredder, I'm sorry, I should have tried harder, I lost control—</em>
</p>
<p><b>I pushed you,</b> Shredder interrupted. <b>It's okay.</b> She folded her hands in her lap and kicked her legs in the air. If Robbie concentrated, he could almost feel her patent-leather shoes tapping the underside of his glovebox, her light weight on his upholstery.</p>
<p>He stared at her, through her. Memorized the child-shaped space inside his cabin where she was supposed to be. Was she really okay? How would he know—he couldn't touch her, he couldn't check her for injuries. All he could do was listen to her, try to feel her in his mind. Whatever she'd experienced when their body had died, she seemed shaken by it.</p>
<p><b>You're really sad,</b> Shredder said, staring at her hands. <b>It's like...something got torn out of you.</b></p>
<p><em>It happens,</em> Robbie said lamely. He bent down under his seat and fished out one of the miniature water bottles he kept in the Charger for passengers. <em>People die. The people who are left miss them.</em></p>
<p>
  <b>It's horrible.</b>
</p>
<p>Robbie cracked open his water and poured a little in his mouth, tipped his head this way and that to let the water dribble around and un-stick everything. He gargled a moment, then rolled down the window and spat out soot. The next sip of water was cleaner. He swallowed through the cramp in his throat, and it hurt, but after that everything loosened up and he chugged it. It sat cold in his stomach. <em>I'm sorry,</em> Robbie told Shredder. <em>I can.</em> He felt a shiver of fear at what he was willing to do to himself for his little sister. <em>I can try not to be so sad.</em></p>
<p><b>No,</b> Shredder snapped. <b>That's bad for you. I meant...even though your mom was a nasty person—</b></p>
<p><em>She was <b>not,</b></em> Robbie hissed.</p>
<p>
  <b>Even though she was really mean to Eli—</b>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Because she knew he was a fucking psychopath—</em>
</p>
<p><b>You still miss her and you're still hurting so bad after so many years,</b> Shredder said. <b>And you don't want anyone else to hurt like that. I didn't know. </b></p>
<p>
  <em>It's called grieving. It takes a long time.</em>
</p>
<p><b>Oh.</b> Shredder pulled a knife out of her pocket, reached her hand through the glass, and dropped it outside the car. Robbie heard it clink. <b>I changed my mind. I don't think we should kill people. </b></p>
<p><b> Wait, wait, wait— </b>Eli sounded frantic.</p>
<p>Shredder threw her arms in the air.<b> Eli, if we kill somebody, people who loved them will grieve them! For years! </b></p>
<p>
  <b>Life sucks! People die! Grow up! </b>
</p>
<p><b>Don't treat me like I'm stupid, </b> Shredder growled. <b> Go away. </b></p>
<p>Robbie fiddled with his plastic water bottle, popping dents into it. <em>Actually, Shredder, some people are dangerous—and some people, they kill for fun, or for money they don't need, or because they're too lazy to stop it. They kill innocent people, and I. I can't just let them get away with it.</em></p>
<p><b>So <em>scare</em> them. Scare them until they stop doing it! </b> Shredder pounded her fists on his seat. <b> You can do it! You just have to be smart! We can help people without killing anybody! </b></p>
<p>Robbie licked his lips. <em> I. I'm not sure that would— </em></p>
<p><b>I believe in you.</b> And he could feel her, believing in him, like warm hands cupped around his ribs and lifting him high into the air, and in that moment, Robbie believed in himself, too.</p>
<p><b>My God what have I done,</b> Eli said.</p>
<p><b>I told you to leave,</b> said Shredder, and then Eli's presence felt very, very far away.</p>
<p>“What—where'd he go?” Robbie stared wide-eyed out the windshield. He felt through the car, listened to the corners of his skull. No Eli. Just Shredder, sitting next to him on the passenger seat, real as thought.</p>
<p><b>He's not listening to me and you don't want to hear him,</b> Shredder said. <b>So I'm keeping us from hearing him. </b> She looked up at him, oddly shy. <b>Is that okay?</b></p>
<p>“Shredder, that's the best thing you could possibly do for us,” Robbie said, choking up. “I wish I could hug you.”</p>
<p>Shredder drew herself up straight in the seat, taken aback. <b>...Can I watch you cut up some chicken?</b></p>
<p>“Sure. Yes. You can help me do the cooking every time. Thank-you so much, you're the best sister ever.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>All Eli's backstory here is just my headcanon. We know very little about him from the comic. I just think it would be ironic, given his canon vendetta against Yegor Ivanov, if he'd been informing on Yegor the whole time. Also in-character. "The rules apply to everyone but me."</p>
<p>The nice skinny cop with the prematurely white hair is Officer Marco Miranda from Felipe Smith's independent comic, Death Metal Zombie Cop. He's probably not going to last long on the Force.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Reyes family (minus Eli) watch Ninja Wolf and talk about ethics.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Robbie woke on Sunday, he felt an irresistible urge to do...something, drive the car off a cliff, knock down a building, scream, beat a person half to death, <em>something,</em> so he deep-cleaned the entire apartment: scrubbing the beige walls in the kitchen that had been yellow when he was five, sweeping the floor where Mom's rocking chair had used to sit, dumping crumbs out of all the drawers in the kitchen and finding his old race-car stickers he'd put there when he'd been three years old. Gabe watched him work, and Robbie kept breaking off to stare at him, choked with awe that he'd grown up so brave and good and kind, astonished that they'd both survived being abandoned in the apartment on that long-ago night that suddenly felt like yesterday. Gabe told him he was being weird, and since Robbie had been possessed by a serial killer for almost two years now, that was really saying something.</p><p>Missing Mom and Dad felt like burning to death, but internally. Robbie knew he just had to <em> finish burning </em> and then he'd be alright for a while, but it took so long when it was his heart and not his body in pain. Maybe he'd never stop burning, maybe it would come and go for the rest of his life. He could live with that, probably. He sprayed off-brand surface-cleaner on a stubborn spot on the wall, and came up with half a layer of pink paint.</p><p>Shredder was there, watching.</p><p>She was keeping Eli on mute, now that they were fighting, but without Eli, it fell to Robbie to help her stay conscious—ask her if the lightswitches looked clean enough, share newly accessible childhood memories with her, ask her where she was standing so she could picture herself walking around the room or crawling into the cupboard Robbie was currently scrubbing. He remembered, as a feeling instead of a memory, the helpless disorientation of un-being, the years he'd spent repressing himself and being repressed, and also the few disorienting times that Eli had stolen his body from him; that void was waiting for Shredder if he forgot to think about her for too long. He hated that she was so vulnerable.</p><p>Of course, if Robbie forgot to keep Shredder conscious, Eli would come back. That was a pretty good reminder to take care of his sister.</p><p><b>Take a break,</b> Shredder suggested at one in the afternoon. Robbie abruptly realized that he hadn't eaten breakfast, he was tired, he was sweating, and he couldn't afford to use up all the paper towels.</p><p>It was too hot to go out to the duck pond like he and Gabe often did on Sunday, so Robbie put tater tots in the oven and got out Gabe's Ninja Wolf DVDs, the 2010 series with digital animation. It was a welcome distraction from the fun-house mirror the apartment had become since Robbie had re-joined himself. <em> You're gonna learn a lot about fantasy heroes, and cars, </em> Robbie informed Shredder as he helped Gabe onto the couch while the tots baked. <em> Sorry if you don't like cars. </em></p><p><b> Cars are okay, </b> Shredder said. She was picturing herself sitting on the other end of the couch from Gabe, kicking her feet and reading the menu on the TV. She still looked like a skinned ten-year-old, but today she'd made her face a touch less...photorealistic. <b> This is a boys' show. </b></p><p><em> Yeah. </em> Robbie wondered where Shredder's gender had come from. Eli hated women even more than he hated people in general, and Robbie, in his own view, was a stereotypically masculine guy; he liked cars and punk rock and he got in too many fights. Didn't girls need female role models? Robbie didn't know what girls liked, and Shredder probably didn't know either. <em> But. Girls can watch boy things. And there's girls in it too. </em> “Gabe, Shredder's here.”</p><p>“Hi, Shredder!” Gabe said, waving at Robbie.</p><p>Gabe was such a good big brother even though he'd only known about Shredder for a week and he'd never properly met her, and he was so nice and it felt so good to be looked at, and <em> whoa. </em> Robbie swayed on his feet. “Um. This is Robbie. Do you remember which episodes have girls in them? Like Holly, where she gets to be a hero? I think Shredder would like that.”</p><p><b> Maybe. </b> Robbie felt Shredder feeling patronized.</p><p>
  <em>This is Gabe's favorite show, it's pretty good.</em>
</p><p>
  <b>I'll watch it.</b>
</p><p>“Um,” Gabe said, grabbing the remote. He gripped it in both hands and scrolled through the episode list until he hit on Wrath of Arkara Part II: Clash In Queens. “This one. This one's really good. Arkara, she's a samurai from ancient times, she fights Ninja Wolf in Japan and she's a <em>big</em> bad guy, she's head of all the Ear Clan, but this time she follows him through the Time Well to New York because she's mad he keeps beating her, and Holly, she's from New York, she's Ninja Wolf's best friend—<em>in the show,</em> she's his best friend—” He jerked his chin at Robbie as if to reassure him that as far as Gabe was concerned, Ninja Wolf's real best friend was Gabe's battered Terminator toy with the metal skull, which vaguely resembled the Rider. “Holly's really cool, she invents things and she has lots of computers. And, um. Arkara! Arkara's Holly's great-great, great-great-great, great-great grandmother. And it's sad because Arkara's super evil, but she loves Holly, but she's evil, and she takes over Ninja Wolf's mind and tries to take over New York and Holly has to save him with her, um. EMP! It blows up Arkara's Crystal Shard, and—oh, that was spoilers. I'm sorry, Shredder.”</p><p>Robbie couldn't stop himself from remembering bits and flashes from the show throughout Gabe's explanation, unintentionally spoiling the plot even further. If he was remembering the right episode, this one got kind of heavy.<b> I want to watch it!</b></p><p>“Shredder says that's okay, she wants to watch it.”</p><p>“Awesome!” Gabe said, and started the episode. <em>Ninja Wolf! From Kyoto to the Boroughs he's a supernatural superhero! Ninja Wolf! A monster and a warrior he's here to save us all!</em> The intro had clips from last season's finale, when Ninja Wolf ziplined from the Empire State Building to a dirigible filled with missiles loaded with mutagenic gas, and some earlier episodes—the shark men, the vampires, the flying squid aliens. Ooh, there was the sentient, transforming Toyota Supra—er, Moyota Supreme—Robbie kind of liked that episode, wait, no, he <em>wanted to watch</em> that episode; he could remember watching Ninja Wolf with Gabe ever since he'd gotten his hands on the DVDs, and the TV playing in the background while he paid bills and did homework, but part of Robbie felt like he hadn't watched TV in over ten years, and Shredder had never watched Ninja Wolf at all. “Can Shredder talk?” Gabe asked.</p><p>“Um—”</p><p>
  <b>Maybe?</b>
</p><p>“Is it okay if she tries?” Robbie asked.</p><p>“If Robbie says it's okay,” Gabe said, shrugging. He looked over his shoulder at the kitchen. “I smell tater-tots!”</p><p>“Fifteen minutes, buddy,” CHECK Robbie told him. <em>Okay, Shredder. Go ahead and, um, talk, and think, and everything. I take back what I told you before, you can think about Gabe. I...shouldn't have said you couldn't.</em></p><p>Shredder felt shy. Robbie looked at Gabe and felt shy, which was completely different from feeling like he was seeing Gabe for the first time in years, and was somehow even weirder. <b> Maybe soon. </b></p><p>They watched Arkara break into the Time Well and lead the Ear Clan on a rampage through New York, confront Holly at her university lab, and then capture Ninja Wolf in retaliation after Holly rejected her offer to teach her the ways of the Ear. They watched Ninja Wolf, wearing a golden collar around his neck, fling cop cars through tenth-story windows, until Holly buzzed to the rescue on her flying Vespa and threw a sparking electronic gadget at him.</p><p><b> Are bad people like Ninja Wolf? </b> Shredder asked as he ripped his deactivated collar off, howling. <b> Is there something that makes them hurt people? </b></p><p><em> Maybe, </em> Robbie said.</p><p>
  <b>You don't think so.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>Ninja Wolf didn't have a choice when Arkara put the collar on him, but this is a cartoon, not real life. Even Eli couldn't do that to me. Arkara wasn't forced to invade New York, she just did it because she wanted to.</em>
</p><p>The oven timer beeped, and Robbie stopped to pause the episode—“Hey!” Gabe protested—so he could dish up two plates of tater tots.</p><p>“I don't want Shredder to miss anything,” Robbie explained. Gabe started it back up when Robbie returned and put the plates on the coffee table.</p><p>“Shredder, do you like Ninja Wolf?” Gabe asked, leaning forward and bracing himself on the table so he could poke at the tater tots while they cooled.</p><p><b>Can I switch—</b>Shredder cut herself off, startled to find herself up top, inhabiting the entire body. The moment Gabe spoke to her, Robbie had ducked out of her way. Eli had always warned her that she'd have a fight on her hands if she ever wanted Robbie to share control, but he'd just pulled himself loose from his body so hard and so fast that she'd bobbed up to the front to fill the void without having to push at all. That was hard for hosts, it took practice, which Robbie could only have gotten by giving control to Eli. She wondered if Eli hadn't appreciated it when Robbie had done it for him, or if he'd lied to her.</p><p>She hoped Eli hadn't lied to her on purpose.</p><p>The body's sensations distracted her, stronger than she was used to now that Robbie wasn't in the way—the edges of the teeth against the tongue, the crease of Robbie's jeans digging into the top of the thigh where they folded from sitting on the couch, the scent of grease and potatoes. She looked down and turned the body's hands back and forth, feeling muscles tug under the skin. Robbie wasn't holding her back from anything; she could probably stand up and walk around the room if she wanted, but she wasn't sure she was ready for that yet. It was still so weird looking at herself from a first-person perspective.</p><p>Gabe had asked her a question, Robbie reminded her. “<b>Yeah,</b> ” she said, with Robbie's voice. “ <b>Ninja Wolf's cool.</b>”</p><p>She picked up a warm tater tot, felt its rough crispy edges between callused fingertips, and set it back down on a different area of the plate, grinned uncontrollably. She picked up another one and set it next to the first, appreciating the way they stayed where she'd put them even when she stopped thinking about them: physical objects in the physical world.</p><p>Beside her, Gabe did the same thing. “I remember that,” he said. “The doctors told me to do that in PT. Over and over. Look.” He flipped a tot upright on its butt end, hovered his hand over it as it wobbled. “Look! Look, it's staying! Shredder, you try!”</p><p>Shredder picked up another tot, getting the fingers greasy. She had to rotate the right wrist again just as she had when she'd been examining the hands, and this was how she set the tater tot upright. It fell over, and she did it again, this time squished it down until the crunchy shell collapsed against the plate, and it stayed up, a little food tower.</p><p>“Look, look, he's fighting Arkara!” Gabe interrupted, pointing, and she and Robbie looked up at the screen.</p><p>Ninja Wolf was using his claws to counter Arkara's sai. He almost never fought unarmed unless it was a series finale or an episode about his animal nature; he preferred to use weapons, like a human. But after being collared and turned on the people of New York, Ninja Wolf was furious. The animators didn't show the blood, but they showed him snarling whenever he blocked her strikes with his bare palms. The National Guard had routed most of the Ear Clan, and now all that remained were Arkara and three of her top henchmen who were busy fighting Holly with her electric bo-staff. Arkara was desperate.</p><p>Though Arkara was one of Ninja Wolf's most dangerous enemies, she relied on her army, weapons, magic, and wits. Her army and her Crystal Shard were gone, and her sais were tiny compared to Ninja Wolf's slashing claws. She looked small and frightened. Ninja Wolf had gone animalistic, his irises shrunk to pinpricks, teeth slavering. He knocked her down and stretched one arm high overhead.</p><p>Part of Robbie knew what would happen next and the rest was almost scared for Arkara.</p><p>“Stop!” Holly yelled, blocking her friend's strike with her bo-staff. “We beat her, Ninja Wolf! Don't do something you can't take back!”</p><p>“<b>He doesn't kill her,</b>” Shredder said, wonderingly, as Ninja Wolf rose to his hind feet and hung his head, panting. “<b>He beat her, he doesn't need to.</b>”</p><p><em> She comes back as a villain for two more seasons, </em> Robbie said.</p><p>“People don't die in the cartoon because little kids are watching,” Gabe explained. “In the comics people die. But.” He cocked his head and hummed. “Not a lot.”</p><p><b> She keeps hurting people, </b> Shredder sighed, sinking back down and leaving Robbie to try one of the tater tots. It didn't burn his mouth, and he nodded to Gabe that they were safe to eat. <em> It's just a cartoon. They need a villain. </em></p><p>
  <b>So maybe real people might change their minds and be better.</b>
</p><p><em> It's possible, </em> Robbie admitted. <em> That just means they're responsible for their actions when they choose not to. </em></p><p>
  <b>Eli could choose to be better.</b>
</p><p>Robbie ground his teeth. <em> He could. He could have, a very long time ago. </em> He turned his tater tot over in his fingers as Ninja Wolf escorted the beaten Arkara back to medieval Kyoto in handcuffs. <em> He's not still here, is he? </em></p><p><b>He's here,</b> Shredder said, and Robbie almost dropped his tater tot. She soothed his stab of panic. <b>I know you don't want him to talk to you, so I'm not letting you hear him.</b></p><p><em>But what about <b>you,</b> </em> Robbie demanded. <em> Is he still talking to you?</em></p><p>Shredder tensed, and Robbie felt a shifting unease—guilt and loss—she <em>missed </em> that psychopath, of course she missed Eli, he'd created her. <b>He's not listening to me about not killing people. So I'm not listening to him. That's how he says to handle it if I disagree with someone. But...I don't know how I'd know if he changed his mind. Because I'm not listening.</b></p><p>Robbie sighed and ate his tater tot. <em>That's the perfect way to deal with Eli. I think you should just keep ignoring him. He's not going to change.</em></p><p>
  <b>He could.</b>
</p><p><em> He could, but he won't. He hasn't. Don't listen to him. </em> Robbie steeled himself. <em> If you do start listening to him again, please let me hear it too. I don't want you to be alone with him. </em></p><p><b> But he scares you, </b>Shredder protested.</p><p>Was that fear he felt when he thought of Eli? His pulse jumping, his palms sweating, the hair rising on the back of his neck and his gut tying in knots? He'd thought that was rage, hatred.</p><p>
  <b>He scares you.</b>
</p><p><em> Doesn't matter, </em> Robbie resolved. <em> You're my sister. I've got your back. </em></p><p>
  <b>Me, too.</b>
</p><p>
  <em>Huh?</em>
</p><p><b>I got your back, too, Robbie. I'll keep him away as long as you need. </b>And she meant it; holding Eli back was as easy as holding down their brain's metaphorical mute button with her metaphorical pinkie finger. She'd been doing it all day, and she could do it for the rest of Robbie's life. She worried about Robbie, and she worried about Gabe, and she wished Eli could be part of their family, but she knew, from studying Robbie, that he was bad for them.</p><p>Robbie felt her resolve as her thoughts blurred into his. <em> Thank-you, Shredder. </em> He slumped over his knees and covered his eyes with his free hand. He'd never be trapped in his head with Eli again. His sister had his back; he didn't have to fight for his soul alone anymore.</p><p>Gabe grabbed his shoulder. “Robbie, you okay?”</p><p>“Yeah,” he rasped. “I think I really am.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Ever repress yourself so hard you give yourself depression?<br/>...Don't do that. It's bad for you. And if you ever un-repress yourself, be ready to feel freaky and useless for several days.</p><p>Credit goes to u/acerobbiereyes for suggesting Ninja Wolf fighting the Ear Clan while time-hopping between modern New York and Feudal Japan!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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